Medcity Covers UnTech Convernce - News Details

iRxReminder in the News

Medcity Covers UnTech Convernce

Clinical researchers can encourage, monitor patient adherence during trials with this app

Aiming to “bring clinical research into the 21st century,” iRx Reminder’s Web and smartphone-based solution is getting some traction as a way to improve patient compliance during clinical trials and let researchers monitor their compliance in real time.

Through a cloud-based control center, researchers set up customizable surveys, education programs and medication reminders that are delivered to a study participant’s smartphone through an app. Patients use the app to track their medication, exercise, emotional state, weight, blood pressure, etc., which becomes data that’s accessible by the researcher as well.

The hope is that researchers will be able to encourage adherence, identify and correct noncompliance early and retain patients in the trial.

“It’s your own device telling you to do what you want to do anyway,” said founder Josh Smith on why a mobile app is a better solution than the reminder phone calls sometimes used during trials today.
CEO Anthony Sterns acknowledged that there are numerous other companies using mobile platforms to improve medication compliance — like PillJogger, HealthPrize and fellow northeast Ohio company CellpathicRx — but said that its platform has already gotten traction with researchers at Case Western Reserve University, Summa Health Systems and Kent State University.

iRx Reminder is targeting 8,400 universities and hospitals nationwide as well as CROs with its solution, Sterns said.

The startup, based in Akron, Ohio, is vying for one of 10 spots in LaunchHouse’s fall accelerator program and demoed the product at Wednesday’s unconference.